ADVENTURES! V.2: STARKID SUMMER SEASON
When last we left our heroes, all of them were getting on planes and going places, some more successfully than others. Most of them were going home, but I was going to CHICAGO for STARKID SUMMER SEASON!!! My vacation continues!!
Monday, Part 2
The scene opens on Sera, Hannah and myself unloading at the airport after our WEIRD Uber ride with that silly motherfucker of a driver. (Actually, a side-note, here's a weird thing that happened: I'm cradling my rocketship as tenderly as possible in transit, when I realize the two side fins that were on the verge of breaking off/falling off have been SECURELY GLUED BACK IN PLACE. I was planning to do this myself once I finally got home for good, but it had already been done?? NOT VERY EXPERTLY I MIGHT ADD because the fins have these little metal pins that are supposed to hold them on, and on one side, the fin had been shoved/glued back into place with the pin still sticking out on the side and not slotted back into the wood of the fin. Also whoever did it also painted some glue onto the crack in the green part, and it left a big slug-trail looking smear of dried glue right below it on the red part. Everyone in our room swears it wasn't them and I believe y'all. SO WHO??? Current theory is that housekeeping knocked it over at some point and thought the damage was their fault so they attempted to repair it for me. I'm still fucking baffled by all of this though. ????????)
ANYWAY I digress. Once in the airport we quickly realize that my gate is nowhere near anyone else's gate so I depart from people earlier than I'd hoped for :( I managed to get through the speedy/easy TSA line somehow though! so that was great! No removing laptop, no taking shoes off etc. etc. I hope I can keep finagling this in the future because it was mad convenient yo. Meanwhile Hannah's split from Sera I guess and Sera is at the gate literally RIGHT next to Kelsey's gate, since like...Kelsey's flight got mad delayed and she is still there, despite having left a couple hours earlier than us for the airport in the first place. So Sera and Kelsey sillytimes while I hang out and do nothing off in the depths of my much less exciting part of the concourse. I may have cried a little :(
Sat at my gaaaate for a while because our takeoff was mini-delayed due to LIGHTNING and all that stuff. Charged my dying phone. Watched this weird video of Pomme Koch and his girlfriend singing a Cher medley or some shit like "what am I doing." Vaguely paid attention to the news or whatever. Finally got on the plane blessssss. It was a longer flight than I wanted it to be and I was borrrrreedddd and p hungry I guess but I DID still have my Lunchable left over from Walgreen's in Orlando but it wasn't quite enough. This was probably the worst flight of my vacation in terms of like. Discomfort?? I think the person in front of me was reclining their seat WHILE I had my tray-table out to do the crossword and eat my food so that was annoying as crap. I also really wanted/needed to sleep and was trying to sleep on my alligator but was not really accomplishing that goal so that was shitty also. Worrrsst was I REALLY HAD TO PEE. BUT I was like well we'll be there soon and dnw bathroom on the plane unless I absolutely have to so I will just chill on it...also the woman next to me was like 12% rude and I didn't want to have to climb over her and yeah. Shrugsville.
We finally land in O'Hare slightly behind schedule because MORE WEATHER AND STUFF and we weren't able to land ~promptly, and then...because lightning.... WE SIT ON THE PLANE FOR LIKE AN HOUR AND A HALF WITHOUT GETTING OFF JUST SITTING THERE ON THE GROUND IN O'HARE. I understand WHY we had to do it for safety reasons and stuff but that does not make it any less shitty??? I was like I'M GOING TO DIE HERE oh my god actually the worst. And for a while they still wanted us to have our seatbelts on and not to stand up!! But FINALLY they let me get up and I went and used the airplane toilet I had to pee so bad I was beyond caring. It was hot and sweaty in the plane and everyone was irritable and SOME OF US...STILL HAVE TO TAKE THE EL INTO THE CITY.... oh my goddddd
At about midnight Chicago time I was finally allowed off the plane and I went to grab my suitcase and hauled my ass down to the blue line. UGH. Nearly passed out on the train but what can you do, and managed to text Gabi "Hey, which way do I go to get to the hotel when I get off the train?" JUST IN TIME FOR my phone to die before I could receive their answer. Fortunately I figured that out pretty easily bc I got my head back on straight. score. At about 1:45am, after landing on the ground in O'Hare at 10:15ish, I finally drag my ass into the hotel room and collapse on...... the floor. Not into the bed. Because I'm still starving, and also, still trying to coordinate last minute plans with the beautiful Molly Scanlon(!!). So I'm literally writing her an email at like 2am while stuffing the last of Gabi's chicken biscuits in my mouth and drinking ALL OF THE WATER bc I got so dehydrated on the cramped and sweaty plane. "I HAVE TO EAT COOKIES...AND EMAIL MOLLY SCANLON!!" actual words out of my mouth. Such a pathetic mess.
Sleep tho. With a real-ass comforter (thanks for nothing Orlando) in a bed only containing one other person. A significant fucking upgrade.
Tuesday
Woke up dying from my period, Gabi also dying from their period. Here we are, folks. It was like that Parks & Rec "I was dying earlier...then I died... Now I'm dead." I was like, Gabi, I'm gonna die and then I'm gonna have to be a ghost, do ghosts have periods?? And they said no, so I was like "THEN SHIT LET'S BE GHOSTS." So fuckin glamorous. (Did I mention we're in the weird hotel from Starship? BECAUSE WE ARE. In a significantly less weird room, but still: weird. The strangest Days Inn ever.)
Because of like, the 4 other things we were trying to do, the Molly situation was basically LUNCH ON TUESDAY, OR UH...IDK. Which was terrible because I was sending her emails about this at 2am Tuesday morning!!! FORTUNATELY, THESE PLANS MAGICALLY WORKED??? She sent me a list of options for stuff in the Evanston area closer to where she works, and one of them was "a vegan/vegetarian place with good desserts and interesting food called Blind Faith Cafe if you like weirder food things and good vegan desserts," so we were like OH, OF COURSE THIS. I was like "Well Gabi's a vegetarian and I love dessert so!!" Good times. Magic Molly plans. aaahhhhh.
We had to navigate some CTA shenanigans due to certain lines not running to where we wanted them to which was meh but then we made it there and got a table! Blind Faith is SUPER CUTE. We want to go there a lot more again like every time we do A Thing we want to make it a point to make a trip out there. Molly arrived and she is aaahhh beautiful we love her. So cute. Our chats with her were GREAT to include the following highlights:
- She knows everything about everyone?? Like she was up on her EKGS And Friends trivia. Cue us theorizing about her just like running flashcards every time before she meets up with us ffff.
- Sandwich banter. I was trying to decide between two of them but I was like "Well, this one sounds like one I could make myself, whereas the other one, I'd have to get at a restaurant, so..." and she was like "Well I don't know you have to do all these things!" and we were laughing about it and one of the things was "age the cheese" and she was like "You have to age the cheese!! You have to sit that cheese down and say, It's time you learn the facts of life." SHE'S JUST....A FUCKING DELIGHT.
- Near the beginning of lunch Sophie called her and they made spooky sister-brainwave plans for thai food? And she was like "That's so weird my sister never calls me like that." So then during the end of lunch, SARAH CALLS HER....ABOUT STUFF and she was SO apologetic like "I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS HAPPENED?" This was so entertaining omg
- We were telling her about what our plans were in the city and like...I/we were pretty much just there to do summer season stuff so we may have called ourselves "starkid trash" and Molly goes "What is that? Is that a thing?" pffff yes molly it is a thing and we are it. embarrassing lol.
Also, you know, the usual trash-talking of Ali and Marty and Corey because they're horrible monsters. And she really loved the corgi print I got her! SHE'S THE CUTEST. What I really loved was this soup I ordered omfg?? It was the soup of the day so now I'm WORRIED that we will go back and it will not be available again because that would be a downright tragedy because I am in love with this soup. I asked about it and as soon as he said "garbanzo" and "cheese" I was like I NEED IT..... damn. It was great because it made up for my sandwich being kind of like, misleading. It said "grilled vegetables" but then a lot of those ended up being...mushrooms??? BUT IT NEVER SAID MUSHROOMS and I was just. So disappointed sitting there picking all the mushrooms off of the thing. Gabi also got tasty potstickers that they shared with us! BASICALLY I want to go there again and everything is vegetarian so Gabi could eat everything and we were just so delighted.
Then Molly had to run back to work but first we took this cute picture because #stealingyourfriends. hehe. Then after she left Gabi and I perused the bakery side of the place and got some treats!! I got two lil baby eclairs and they got this whole tiny-but-also-huge single person(?) babby carrot cake. We kept saying like A WHOLE CAKE but it really was not THAT big but Gabi did still definitely eat the whole cake. hehehe. Molly had also recommended a fun place about a block or two down called The Mexican Shop so we bounced over there too and OMG. EVERYTHING IN THERE IS FABULOUS. they don't? have? a website??? I was SAD because I was like, I can't afford this now but I will definitely buy it from them on the internet, but NOT AN OPTION. Soooo many cute earrings and purses and tops and notebooks and thiiiiings. Gabi tried on a couple dresses! I think! And there was a thing I aaalmost got for my mom but I really could not justify it at all. Just BARELY out of the price range I could handle at this point. so sad. Gonna come back to this place too though absoluuuutely. fun fun fun aahh. Also, as we were getting back on the train, I took a pic of this really cool street art and Gabi judged the fuck out of me for being a tourist oops. IT'S JUST. REALLY COOL??? A LOT OF THINGS I LIKE. It's my phone bg now aahh~~
So then we're like still tired from the night before and from the whole convention basically so we struggle back to the hotel room, eat our treats, and then kind of doze in and out while watching like three episodes of Wife Swap. WHY THIS. I mean, it was on?? so? WHATEVER we gave up lmao. There was one ep where the one couple were like, IRL Superheroes and the other family was not HAVING it ahahaha hilarious? idk idk mannnn. But this was like the longest stretch of just straight chill time we'd had in ages, so I think we were totally capitalizing on it, and it was really nice. We just kind of zonked out on the bed and let our bodies catch back up a little. bless~ Also kind of making plans for the evening re: summer season! cool!!
We decided to head over around 5 I think for the backstage tour. Brian was running them on Tuesday and it was stuuuupid, l m a o. We had kind of decided if we were the ONLY people there we were just going to leave and do the tour Wednesday instead because just us + Brian = lmao no, but there were like 6 of us? Lol so. (Including a real cute friend all the way from New Zealand! She'd been at Leaky too and recognized us (aka my green lol) and we hung with her some.) So Brian lets us in and sits us down and starts talking about some stuff and encourages us to ask any questions we might have, and Gabi's being a shit so they're asking a lot of dumb questions and finally they just go "What's that?" and point at a random thing on the ceiling, and Brian was like "Okay, look, I'm happy to answer any questions but if you're just gonna be like that, I'm gonna have to put you on probation." BRIAN PUT GABI ON PROBATION lmao what a stinker!! This was so silly. He did take us up into the tech booth and show us the really cool shit they use to do the livestreams, though. The livestream cameras were synched to this joystick, so you could just steer the joystick in the direction you want the camera to go, and use it to zoom in and stuff, and the buttons let you switch between cameras! That was some real neat shit. (I stuck a #TinCaNinja sticker to part of the tech booth. No regrets.)
Then backstage proper, with all the funny TURN OFF YO MIC signs everywhere, and I slipped another sticker just casually into the pocket of Nick's Obi-Wan robe on the costume rack. Gabi I think put one on EKG's prop/costume crate, and another one next to Corey Dorris's name above the makeup mirrors (and I was like...gabi....that is not the right corey.... lmao). Mostly: Brian. He was just kind of the typical Brian half-troll, half-wet blanket and it was funnyyy and here we are. But we did actually get to see a lot of the cool things in their back of house and it WAS pretty neat. I guess. lol.
After that we kind of just got turned loose in the line, and had to sit and wait for a while. There was a little bit of line silliness! Some people behind us from the STL area? I think that was Tuesday night? They seemed super fun and nice~ And like, Actual Adults so that was refreshing. Mostly we just kind of camped out there and didn't do a whole lot; Tuesday wasn't as busy as Wednesday. And then it was time to go in and see Ani!! We got great seats! We were front row, in the center section but right on the stage-right aisle. So basically right in front of the band lol. Super cool to have TalkFine's album playing as pre-show music, and yeeeahh!! Ani happened!!!! I love StarKid shows live so much aahhh okay highlights:
- I actually...knew...a lot of the Star Wars stuff? that I didn't think I would? It was my luck that most of it was either super common knowledge, or else came from Episode I, which is one of the only ones I've seen, oops.
- The dancing!! DENISE IN GENERAL!!! Denise was probably my favorite part of this show and she did a real great job. Also as choreographer because Ani definitely had some of the best StarKid dancing I've seen in a while! She has a v different flavor from James Tolbert and it really shone through.
- Hand-in-hand w that: THE BAND. It was weird but cool...??? to have the characters themselves not be singing like in a true musical, just the band doing silly stuff. But I was into that! A lot of the songs were super fun and I can't wait for the soundtrack to come out.
- Julia Albain's character, as Joe Walker's character's love interest, was named Emily..... A Situation I was having
- Eric Kahn Gale crab-walking all over the place in super-tight leather pants was definitely A Highlight Of The Show. pleeeeassse lmao congrats on that jade elizabeth
- Everything Nick Lang did, a lot of which defies description. Drunk Obi-Wan, mostly. jesus.
But most importantly...a Blooper/Corpsing Situation....
Denise's B-plot character arc has to do with being a dancing slave girl in Jabba's palace? Ok sure. SO there is this one scene where she goes to audition, and the other girls at the audition are being played by Meredith in a neat costume and Chris Allen in a tiny Slave Leia-esque situation that obviously is too small for him. It's a tie-on bikini, but clearly does not tie all the way in the back bc it's tiny, but sure, whatever, that's part of the joke. BUT SOMEHOW...THIS WARDROBE MALFUNCTION...... I don't know where my head was for the beginning of this, distracted by Denise or the band or something, but the next thing I know Meredith and Chris are straight LOSING THEIR SHIT because so much is going wrong with this bikini thing. They're fumbling with it and trying to get stuff to happen and it's just NOT WORKING and they're both breaking character all over the place, so finally Chris decides fuck it, he's just going to yank the bikini straight off and be topless, fine, so he goes to do that, and in yanking it off it gets stuck on the wig he's wearing and he yanks the wig off too. EVERYONE'S DYING. He tries to put the wig back on but the bikini is still snarled in it and everything is going SO wrong and the audience is dying and Chris and Meredith are dying and the band is dying and somewhere in here Meredith takes both hands and slaps him right on both nipples, and then, after most of this ordeal is already over, Meredith's honest-to-god scripted line in the show as written that she's been saying every night already is something along the lines of "Girl, your titty is OUT, put them away." IT'S A LITTLE LATE FOR ALL OF THAT. ohhhhh my god, I hope they tell this story. I hope I can ask the right questions at future events to prompt them into telling this story to the public because it was So Much.
(Side note also: At one point a light saber or other weapon or something shot out of someone's hand and clattered across the stage kind of directly at where Gabi and I were sitting. I leaned to them and I was like "Shit, we were almost The People That Got Hit With The Light Saber a la The Girl That Got Hit With The Candy Cane!!" and we were gigglinnnnnn)
Overall, Ani had a bunch of super fun lil moments but unfortunately that was most of what the show was: just lil moments. It felt a lot like the guys had come up with some great one-off Star Wars jokes that they all really liked, so they were like, well, I bet we can string these together to make a show! But it just LOOKED really strung together, and not even making fun of itself could patch over those empty spots. It was a bunch of Star Wars jokes inserted into a weak-ish "underdog sports movie" storyline and I think, sadly, it's been their worst showing yet. Maybe people who REALLY like Star Wars, or REALLY like Chris Allen, were more into it than I was, idk. Glad I saw it but definitely won't be my favorite. (The soundtrack is gonna rule, though. TalkFine is super legittttt)
After the show I guess we saw Arianna? Just kind of hung out and did some things. I think this is when I bought the two Quicksand Jack single-issues and I was super stoked on that. Jenny is small and cool. Also I was trying to talk to the dudes from the band, mostly Pierce, and I didn't manage to ever find Pierce BUT I did snag Corey Richardson! What a baaaaabe. He signed my rocket for me, which I think he was a little overwhelmed by, and then thanked me super honestly for coming out to the show and having a good time and then SHOOK...MY HAND....... THIS WAS SO HILARIOUS AND UNCOMFORTABLE LMAO oh corey. u babe. And then with nothing better to do, and because it was free, we stayed for Meredith's latenite silly time!
This was kind of fun! Dunno if I'd've paid for it because half of it or so was just not my speed, but it was nice to support people doing a fun thing and so that made me feel good I guess. A neat guitar-playing friend of Mere's got up and did a couple of songs and one of them was...so funny.... it was about a man with boobs for eyes omg I hope I can find it on the internet to share with you PERHAPS THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE.... ALAS but it was called Titty Eyeballs and she sounded like she should have been on, like, the Juno soundtrack so the contrast of her soft, sweet style and the subject matter was hysterical. Also a woman who did impressions! The funniest ones were she did like, nursery rhymes/kids' songs as celebrities? So she did Wheels On The Bus as Celine Dion and that was funny enough but then she did Hickory Dickory Dock as Randy Newman and I was PISSING. They were p much the highlights of this tho. Mostly I was just having my period so aggressively that I was having a hard time sustaining the Fun and I needed to go die, blehhh. But thank u Meredith for doing fun things!!
So AFTER after, we are all kind of dying, and idk I'm not in the world's GREATEST mood bc period, but Jadey-poo was there and it was fun to see her again because she's an absolute delight. AND THIS PERSON WE DO NOT LIKE WAS THERE.... I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO LEAVE OUT ACCOUNTS OF PEOPLE I DO NOT LIKE SO THAT I DO NOT SEEM LIKE A JERK BUT Jade also does not like her, hint hint I mentioned her in my account of drunk Saturday Night Jade, so it was funny for us to just all be in the same place after having had that exchange over the weekend and yeeeeesh. I think she was creeping trying to find Pierce? but he was long gone lmao. And finally there was like practically NO ONE there we stayed real late so it was time to head back. Walking back to the hotel we walked past this neat-looking shop called Twosided? and we were like, Yooo, we have to go back there when it's open because it looks mad cool. WELL. MORE ON THIS SITUATION LATER.....
Wednesday!
WE HAD A GREAT DAY WEDNESDAY. SO MANY FUN THING. We told ourselves we were gonna get up early for continental breakfast bc we hadn't managed that the day before, so we did! Except I thought it was going to be more like City Suites, where you just...go downstairs...the food is there...you can take some food and then leave again, so we didn't wear shoes, and this lady got mad at us for not wearing shoes and made us go back and get shoes fffff. But we ran back into New Zealand friend from the night before! Who was apparently also staying at the Weird Days Inn. We sat with her while we ate some waffles and tried to figure out our plans because Wednesday was the day we had slated for our SEUSSICAL ADVENTURE!!!
True story Gabi and I were REALLY trying to go see Seussical at Chicago Shakes. We knew Wednesday was going to be the only day we could do it because they had a morning showing, which wouldn't conflict with our Summer Season stuff, but somehow, while Gabi was in Italy, the ONE DAY we could go became the ONE DAY that the morning show was totally sold out. ?????? WE WERE REAL SALTY ABOUT IT TOO so we were like, Fuck it. We're gonna go out to Navy Pier, look pitiful at the box office, and see if we can get tickets. By the time we were done eating + dressed and showered we were cuttin it super-close on time, so we basically had to take the el as far in as we could, and then say "fuck it" to our plan of walking there and get a taxi real quick instead. THIS WAS AN ADVENTURE BECAUSE OUR TAXI DRIVER WAS A CRAZY DRIVER?? Like. He definitely drove over the speed limit/any speed that was safe and I'm pretty sure he did several illegal traffic maneuvers also. Ummmmm omg okay wow terrifying. Gabi and I were like !!!! BUT we got there with several minutes to spare, and it only cost like $8, so over all, mission success. Just. Dang. U crazy taxi friend.
Hauled ass up into CST and talked to some nice friends at the box office! They did not have any more available seats - several kids' camps were there, so that explained that - but they were able to put us on a waiting list, and we were fourth. Not ideal but hey we figured we weren't doing anything else so why not man!! We attempted to go sit in a sitting-down place but it was beyond the ticket-taker and he didn't want to let us at first, said we should probably stand and listen up if we were on a waiting list, but then the usher we talked to immediately was like "Well, why don't you just, go sit down..." and let us go over there lol. And then with SUPER AWESOME LUCK we got in!!!!!!! Seussical!!!!
We weren't able to sit next to each other which was the one super bummer part. They had us on awkward stools at the very back, one on either side of the center aisle door. That was pretty NEAT though because sometimes actors would enter through that door/come in from the audience, so like you'd look over and just fuckin...sour kangaroo is right next to you chillin omg. I was very EMOTIONS!!! I LOVE SEUSSICAL!!! Definitely cried. It was a neat production because there was basically NO ensemble like all the named parts just filled in when they weren't being their regular character. The Mayor was one of the Wickershams and his wife was one of the Bird Girls and yeah. BIRDS WERE SO CUTE THEIR CHARACTER SHOES WERE ORANGE LIKE LIL BIRD FEET. Also lots of POC in the cast yay and Gertrude was noticeably plus sized double yay!! I hate when characters who are supposed to be plain-looking/unattractive are just conventionally attractive actors dolled up to look unappealing. Give me nontraditional cuties pls. EVERYONE was adorable JOJO was adorable she was a tiny asian girl who was apparently a high school student?? Which wow because she looked like 10. The Wickershams were like skater punks with cool helmets (one had a skateboard, one had a razor scooter and one had rollerblades) and the SET and the LIGHTS and the BAND were REALLY GOOD ALL THE TECH STUFF WAS SUPER WELL EXECUTED LIKE A++++ SORRY YOU DIDN'T GET TO SEE THIS COREY LUBOWICH BUT WE DID BECAUSE WE MADE GR8 LIFE CHOICES.
The material itself was cut down some so it could be under 90 minutes (as a "children's production" or whatev) so it was baaaasically Seussical Jr., but Gabi and I both agreed that the only things we missed about the cuts were the act I How Lucky closer and then Hunch. Schmitz didn't really have a place in this version, esp with all the gendered language about making a boy a man considering Jojo was a girl, so yeeahhhh. OVERALL SO SO SUPER FUN I am so glad that we threw caution to the fucking wind and made it into this production. And yeah I definitely cried A LOT during Alone In The Universe and then a little bit more during Solla Sollew because let's be real, who do you think I am, a person who DOESN'T cry at these things? ChiShakes was super sweet about it tho awww
While we debriefed on the show and just basked in each other's company aaahhh the friendshipz we decided that I needed to be the kind of tourist who went on the Navy Pier ferris wheel! SPOILERS I LOVE FERRIS WHEELS. This was such a nice breezy lil relaxing thing to do before hiking back to where we could catch the train to recoup and then hit Summer Season part 2. The views and stuff were all so pretttyyyyy and I am really glad that we did the thing. Unfortunately, some plans we made while doing the thing.... Look, let me remind you that Corey SUPER INSINUATED that I might be permitted to crash a Tin Can Bros Alive rehearsal, and that he did this of his own volition and not because I said anything anglin' for an invite. Let's put that back out there. So I was like, Today is the only time I am going to be able to do this, and I had already tweeted at him a couple times with no response, and I was getting impatient, so we kind of said, Let's just go to Stage 773 and just like show up and see if they're there, or what. So once we got off the ferris wheel we began (this is what I called it in my notes) The Journey.
Spoilers: I spent pretty much the entire duration of this Journey having to pee prrreetty bad. But I was like, it'll be okay, I'll pee at 773. No worries at all. So Gabi decides they need to stop at their ATM, and then they really needed a Diet Coke as per usual so we stopped at Walgreen's across the street and they got a Diet Coke and I got an orange juice because it was hot and we were thirsty. Excellent cool success awesome. So like I'm still drinking this orange juice because it's hot and my mouth is thirsty EVEN THO I HAVE TO PEE P BAD and that's just making it WORSE, and by the time we're on our train I am like, the Great Big Struggle.
We get off at our beloved Belmont stop (xoxo City Suites) and head over to 773 and of course...we did not realize... IT IS NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. HOW DUMB ARE WE. We can't get in and no one seems to be inside so just like, auugghhh, and I was like "Maybe they will at LEAST let me in to pee I NEED TO PEE" but no alas. Some kids from the production of Rent that was going on in there came and unloaded and ran inside and I almost tried to follow them but I didn't want to be too weird heh. Finally we just had to give up the fucking ghost and recognize that I was not going to get to a) crash this TCB rehearsal or b) pee. UGH.
We had kind of decided to go to Forever Yogurt (♥) though, so at LAST, the restroom, and then froyo! AAHH YUM. Forever Yogurt u are good people and we like u. That pistachio flavor was tasty as hell and she even got me that whipped cream out when I asked real nice hehe~ Gabi I think got Hella Fruit and then like 800000 too many toppings gabi needs to be saved from themselves tbh. But this was basically our lunch so. Yay fun!
We continued our walk back to our hotel, and suddenly we were like, WAIT: We'd been planning all day to get dumb stuff for Dan Strauss for his birthday, and we'd been in that Walgreen's and totally not gotten anything! We're The Worst. Fortunately, Chicago is the Land of 1000 Walgreen'ses (much like Lynchburg is with CVS), so there was totes another one on our way back. We got some great stuff~ I'd really wanted to get him a Happy Birthday Grandpa card, and the one I got him was just super perfectly like, sincere and cheesy and over the top, and Gabi was similarly invested in one congratulating him on the birth of his child (as Jaime Lyn had implied on twitter earlier that day). We also got some fun shiny trash party hats and a tiny balloon on a stick. Eeeexcellent. DELIGHTFULLY, this Walgreen's was also right next to a Petco, so we naturally had to go into the Petco and look at cats.
CAAAATTS!!
There were three kitties on display and they were all WONDERFUL. One of them was a tubby, mostly-white girl named Sparkle who looked sooooo much like Chansey that it was giving me the sads. Gabi really liked another fellow, a pitiful-looking brown baby named Langston (a name that had some sort of Oberlin significance so they were really into it and all over him), and I fell in love with THIS DELIGHTFUL JAUNTY LONG-LEGGED DUDE NAMED MONTY. OMG HE WAS THE BEST he was colored kind of like Justice's Bella? White on the bottom and tabby-brown on top but he had a little of C2's Loki about him in the face, and he was just. A GIANT. He was almost built more like a small dog than like a cat, his LEGS and just kajsdhfkajsfdh I seriously almost adopted a cat in Chicago, y'all. I wanted him so bad. He was just the handsomest lil man and I'm so sad that he didn't get to be mine. LOOK AT HIM.
We finally tore ourselves away from the cats (and from the temptation of buying a dog toy for Bowser or a cat toy for Valentine - too many options!!) and continued walking back to the Weird Days Inn. We're coming up Clark and we pass that shop again, Twosided, and we were like, Oh yeah! We were gonna go in there! So we sidetrack to go check it out. And there...sitting on the front stoop of this shop...the thing that would become iconic of our entire Summer Season Adventure...
FREE MUSHROOM.
I kind of -- stopped, and looked at it. I was like, "Wait a minute, free? Like is this piñata really free? But --OMG, IT'S DAN'S BIRTHDAY, A FREE PINATA? FOR DAN?" Literally a total stranger walking by was also entertained by FREE MUSHROOM and he witnessed my freakout and he was like "Well, you have to take it now." !!!???!?!?! I scooped the thing up and took it inside with me, lest someone else lay claim to my FREE MUSHROOM while we were otherwise occupied, and eventually I had to take it up to the women working there and be like, I'm sorry, but is this really totally free?
She goes "Oh, yeah! We've been cleaning out the back, we have a bunch of stuff that we're trying to just get rid of, here, take some more." We ended up also receiving a shitty plastic fake Oscar trophy, nowhere near actual size, and a couple of party-store type paper bats with unfolding wings. LIKE SIMILAR TO THESE BUT SHITTIER/STUPIDER-LOOKING THAN THOSE oh yeah. wow. this high quality free shit. The FREE MUSHROOM was still pretty great though so I was like, hell yes, thank you so much, and I told her how it was our "friend's" birthday and we were going to use it for him just as a surprise, because it was fate, now, so. Wednesday was A DAY.
The shop itself was actually suuuuper cool though, and each of us got things we actually paid for, too, because we thought these people deserved it hahaha. Gabi got a hilarious "Happy Gluten-Free Birthday" card for Lemley (whose birthday was also that wednesday I think! crazy) and I got a rad notebook, with the intention of making it my new scrapbook-notebook aaahhhh that's so overwhelming but yeah. As I was buying it she was like, Oh, yeah, that notebook's cool, Jason Mraz actually bought the same one. WHAT? Yeah apparently before he played Lollapalooza he stopped in and he bought the exact same one. Wow cool thanks Jason Mraz. what even was this day.
So THAT adventure completed, we finished The Journey and ended up back at the hotel at last. We planned for Arianna to bring some candy to put inside the piñata, and I made some shitty-but-commendable confetti out of a couple of the 8000 extra MinaLima fliers we'd gotten at LeakyCon, and then we were also trying to make plans with Hannah, to coordinate re: this Cheesie's groupon she had that we were going to use for dinner, and also trying to sneak her into the backstage tour even though she didn't have a season pass, and to sneak us into aNOTHER backstage tour despite having gone already. ULTIMATELY we wasted too much time fucking around, watching Friends and Family Feud, and not timing shit well and this didn't all work out super great. We weren't able to get to Cheesie's before we had to go on the tour.
BUT! WE DID GET TO GO ON THE TOUR AGAIN! And it was GREAT because instead of Brian, we got Walker, and Walker's fucking delightful. He was all over the fucking place with this lol and he started talking to us about random things that were on the stage, some of which Brian had shown us too, and then he mentioned the Stage-Left Door, and I piped up like troll-Hermione like "Say, Joe! Doesn't that door have something of a history within Team StarKid productions?" and Joe was like "Well, that is an excellent question! Why yes!" and we were little shits about it. He went on about the door in their shows blah blah blah walgreen drama center and how they REALLY missed it in Starship, and felt like it was kind of due to the bad luck/superstition of not having the door that stuff in Starship got so messy, and so he said for B@man they asked Corey like, Can you build us a door like The Door for stage left, and the way Walker told this story was so fucking funny oh my god like Gabi and I had to try so hard not to shit ourselves but he was like, Corey said "...Yeah. Yeah, I can build you a door, because that's my fucking job." FFFFFFF so good.
Joe didn't take us to the tech booth but he did take us backstage again, since I guess technically he had to because it WAS a Backstage Tour, and he pointed out this door off stage left that went straight to the outside and was like "This is where the band goes sometimes to smoke cigarettes...smoking is cool, kids! No, but really, it isn't. But the band is cool." And like that was basically just the tone of the whole damn thing lol. The dressing room was fun because Robert and Rachael were back there, and Rachael was cute and I asked her like, what her favorite name was that she had gotten in Oregon and she said Douche-Canoe, and Robert recognized me and made a point of making sure Joe had seen my costume from Leaky! So that was funny. Also there was a big bag of Cookie Crisp just chillin' on the counter and Joe totally offered it to all of us and I was like, oh hell yeah I'm gonna grab a big handful of that, and then I TOTALLY FORGOT TO. whomp hahaha.
Gabi stayed behind for a minute to talk with Rob but eventually we all ended up back in the theatre for some more just nice casual Walker Q&A, and I asked him if he'd thought about doing stuff with the team in any capacity besides acting. He directed the original Penis Play I'm p sure? so yeah, and he talked a little about how he's got an idea for a thing, called The Digger, and he said it was a stupid idea and one of the tech girls (she was up on a ladder doing a thing) was like "It's not stupid! It's a cool idea!" like just interjected haha and that was cute. And so he said that since he'd probably be writing it/creating it from his idea, it's likely that he'd work closely with the Langs on directing it as well, if anything ever came from it. So that's cool!! Walker I think gets overlooked as just like a goofy character actor, and he is really good at that, but there's a lot more to him than being a dweeb and having a smokin' body (which, let's face it, he does, blesssss). Also I mentioned his bunny and we were trying to solicit cute pictures of the bunny but Joey Richter kept interrupting things like a fuckass and then we realized what time it was and we were like, shit, we have to go get our fucking food!! so we bailed. But like I could've bro'd around with Walker for sooo much longer because he's just so rad, aahhhh.
We fucked up so bad timewise with this Cheesie's thing you guys. It came down to, I had to sit and hold our place in line (#LineCon2014) while Hannah and Gabi ran down to get the food, and they were going to bring it back, and we were basically just going to have to eat it in the theatre. OOPS. So I sat in this line for a while and chatted to some cute strangers and a big group in the gen admish line was playing Heads Up and was doing one with songs? and I was trying to help SO BAD this girl could NOT get Take On Me and the people playing were all doing the vocal line of it, but that obviously wasn't working because it's hard to do that without the words, so I started doing the synth beat/the line they sampled for Feel This Moment and they were like "yeah, yeah!" but she still didn't get it. rofl. and I guess I talked to Arianna for a second here too, I know we saw her before the tour and she was all crotchety because we weren't supposed to be doing the tour twice but we did anyway oops and she was like I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY ARE NOT CHECKING PEOPLE OFF THE LIST I CAN'T BELIEVE THEM and that was really funny, and also I gave her the FREE MUSHROOM contraband to secure until the time was right. hehehe. But yeah no I def saw her here because she came through and checked everyone off her list for season pass stuff and yeah.
Hannah and Gabi finally get back with all the food and Hannah gets in the gen admish line but is conveniently like, right parallel with where we are, so we all kind of huddle together from the two separate lines and start stuffing our faces but almost immediately as we begin to eat, the line begins to move and they start to seat us in the theatre. SHIT. WE FUCKED UP LOL. It was cool though because after some scrambling and recombining, we ended up with the EXACT same seats we'd had for Ani the night before, and we just spent the last few minutes between seating and the show starting just...totally scarfing our food as fast as possible and jamming to TalkFine. IT WORKED OUT GREAT BC I WAS LITERALLY SHOVING THE LAST BITE IN MY MOUTH AS THE LIGHTS WERE COMING DOWN. wow. sandwich pros here. damn.
Then: Oregon!!!!!!! I REALLY LIKED IT IT WENT SUPER WELL I LIKED IT A LOT MORE THAN ANI SRY NOT SRY. I feel like everyone's watched the livestream so there's not a whole lot I even need to say but dang it was mad fun. Songs for both the girls!! Lauren sticking stuff in her mouth!! JEFF AND JOEY HAVING RLY GREAT STAGE PRESENCE TOGETHER I am so glad this finally happened in a show because it has not ever happened before and I didn't even know how much I needed it until now. Also the lobsters?????? And like. Who even is Jeff Blim. The only disappointment of this show was that I didn't manage to get them to use Gordon Granger as the surname (they went with "Sneaky Slut" which is so not as funny t b q hhhh). Also let the record show that JeffDad being named Dick-In-The-Face was 10000% Corey Lubowich's doing and you can hold me to that. So many of the other StarKids/buddies were in the audience and they were being SHITS about it the WHOLE TIME and it was soooo great, omg these assholes. When all was said and done: I loved the show, I loved the implimentation of both the music and the fourth-wall breaks, there were some REALLY SOLID Oregon Trail jokes that they never felt the need to deliberately highlight, and just. Jeff and Joey. And COREY. WHEN U WAKE UP W BLOOD ON UR DICK.........................................AND U DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE IT CAME FRUHUMMMMM...... pls. Thanks for this, Jeff Blim, it's exactly what I wanted.
Then we had a great lil interim period between Oregon and MProv where I finally got to see folks! I INTERACTED WITH RACHAEL AND COREY. GOD BLESS. Two of those last few elusive rocketship signatures down! When I talked to Rachael I mentioned that I'd been trying to find her for a while, but that I missed her at Twisted and especially at StarKid Takes Manhattan, and when I said SKTM she was like "Oh! Well thank you so much for coming to that! That was just...so crazy..." YEAH YOU'RE TELLIN ME. And I told Corey I was like "I didn't think I'd ever find you again to have you sign this, I'm so glad!" and he was like "lol well yeah because I haven't been in anything oops!" He was suuuuuper nice, I hope he comes back for stuff again because that would just be great, he's so talented. (And I don't want to be presumptuous but it almost felt like Jeff included him deliberately? Like, I think Jeff is honestly committed to making sure their casts are at least a LITTLE diversified, moreso than the other writers anyway. Mad props dude.)
Daniel arrived just as I was about to pick up our Free For Season Pass Holders posters and I was one of the first people to see him, so I was like, EYYYYY!!! and then everyone kind of turned and noticed and the whole lobby was like EYYYYY and everyone was so stoked to see him, tha birthday boi. I got right out of the line I was supposed to be waiting in to go talk to him oops (Gabi got us the posters eventually anyway so it was all good lol). He was GREAT!! I LOVE DAN. He was so overwhelmed by all the stuff we had for him, the cards and the hats and Arianna's box of donuts, and then I got to tell him the FREE MUSHROOM story and that was really fun and he was just. So stoked!! He deserves it because he is a great guy. Our cards seemed to really entertain him. Also I had signed Kelsey and Sera's names to mine just because Yes and he went "Oh yeah cool Three-Pillow, mm, yeah, Oh! and Charles, yes, cool, great." THIS GUYYYY. He took a gold party hat which was the same color I was wearing which was big fun and then he disappeared into the theatre to start getting stuff ready and took the piñata and everything was just so rad. I was so stoked on it.
Then I also kind of saw Meredith, outside, on her way in? And here's the thing was, I had brought this jar of house dressing from the Cheese Shop for Nick Gage, but the way the latenites panned out I realized I wasn't actually going to be seeing him, so I knew I had to give it to Meredith. I wanted to catch her when she wasn't in the middle of a bunch of stuff, so I ducked outside to where like two other girls were talking to her, before she even got in the building, and told her the whole story about it and I was like "so yeah this is for Nick! and he knows what it is!" and she was really cool about it and seemed excited and promised me she would get it to him. She was like, I'm going to leave this in the dressing room I guess because he's gonna be down here soon! so yeah! And that was a relieeeefff because I'd hauled that all the way from Virginia to Orlando to Chicago and it was Very Important. sandwich bros~
Speaking of bros: Nick Strauss was also there for MProv so we got to talk to him some! He told us Nico and Anna Robinson (Mary from The Moms) are engaged!! and gonna get married!! in New York, and how that meant we probably won't see Nico like ever again lol, and I was like....fuck. my rocket remains incomplete lol. And I took pics with Jeff and Joey, both of whom are like FULL ON #cutyourfuckinghair status at this time, alas. Jeff is so delightful lmao what a little shit. And Joey is just so wacky. WE FUCKED UP THO I FUCKED UP bc I was so stoked to get a pic with Joey, since my others with him are superdumb, and so then I get the pic and then Gabi goes "did you do it? did you get him?" and I was like SHIT, I AM SUPPOSED TO HAVE #TINCANINJA'D HIM AND I RUINED IT so Gabi had to do it, and I gotta say they did it less than stealthily. Not two seconds later someone from across the room goes "Hey you have a sticker on your back" and it kind of hit Joey what had happened, and he just sighed and went "oh, yeah, I know, okay, cool." BUT THEN HERE'S THE DUMB THING HE DID: He took it off his back and stuck it on his chest like right in his nipple area? AND JUST LEFT IT THERE FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT. ALL THROUGH THE IMPROV STUFF AND EVERYTHING. these fucking idiots.
MProv was big fun!! Who even is Eric Schinzer. Overall I was way more into this than I was the Meredith stuff the previous night, it was way more my sense of humor - a bunch of stuff about lazer tag; a dude who like everything he imagines with his wacky imagination becomes real (though that quickly devolved into boob jokes); Daniel Strauss shouting "Hey, it's 2014, what's gender?"; several references to Legends of the Hidden Temple; and then one of the last bits of this night was kind of like... Meredith and BRosenthal(? I think) were a couple who were being like way too PDA, and Dan was like, oh no, you can't do that here, because of the bats - every time they uh, see PDA, they just uh - break out into elaborate three part harmony song and dance numbers -- And he set up the dudes being the bats (it was Schinzer and two of the dudes I didn't know) to have to do this thing like backed them into a corner on it but THEY COULDN'T DO ANYTHING BECAUSE THEY SUCK and it turned into just like, the three of them kind of sing-songing "We Are Bats We Are Bats We Are Bats We Are Bats" over and over and OVER again and we were LOSING IT BECAUSE:
WE TOTALLY HAD THESE THREE PARTY-STORE CHEESY HALLOWEEN DECORATION PAPER BATS STILL from Twosided earlier and HOW. Not only FREE MUSHROOM but this thing with the bats and Jess and Arianna and Hannah and Gabi and I were ALL DYING. IT WAS TOO GOOD.
The last improv swap-out of the night they left Dan onstage alone for a second and then instead of coming in to start a new scene, they came in all singing him happy birthday. aahhh it was really cute and nice, big friendship hugs and stuff. He thanked everyone for all the stuff and then brought out FREE MUSHROOM and smashed it right there on stage, with a broom handle! And then he and Meredith and everyone started throwing all the candy into the audience!! All in all it was a PERFECT ending to The Journey of earlier and it felt so cool to have been part of the whole thing. Aahhh daniel is such a good dude and he deserves nice things. what a bro.
After the show we got to talk more with everyone, with Nick and Dan especially, and Arianna took a cute pic with Dan where he's like, measuring how tall she's grown over the years, there was some joke where he's her uncle, it was great lmao. We also ended up talking to Meredith a bunch like riiiight at the end when the whole place was clearing out for the night, and idk she just seemed to be in a super-great mood? Like I feel like a lot of the time I have a hard time getting really Into Meredith because I'm so baffled as to how she makes her way in the world when I just like...don't ever see her being... I don't want to say "Serious" because let's be real when am I ever Serious with a capital S but just like, being... composed? Like behaving ENOUGH like a Rational Adult to stop and do some Rational Adult things but like every time I see her she is like a silly giggly child and idk I guess I just can't PERSONALLY conceive of living one's entire life with that kind of demeanor. But this was the first time I've seen her not be like, totally like that, but having a more realistically grown-up conversation, and still super giddy and excited about all her friends, but not being like 4 years old. SO YEAH IDK THAT WAS COOL and like Meredith IS real nice y'all. (Also those three bats we had, we gave to Dan, Meredith and Schinzer. They were like WTF HOW and we were like WTF HOW I KNOW RIGHT. so much happened.)
There were some friends who found out they were staying in our same hotel and wanted to walk back with us? Just for Safety Times so we all headed back to Weird Days Inn and we were telling them silly stories and they were telling us silly stories and that was real cool, and we all stopped at this 7-Eleven and got midnight slurpees aaahhh. LEMONADE SLURPEE IS ALWAYS BEST SLURPEE what a gr8 success. And then before long it was Hotel Time and we were all p exhausted because of doing ALL THE THINGS but I was like no, I need to stay awake forever because in the morning it is OVER so we stayed up maybe a bit too late lol and I played So Bad for Hannah because she told me during TalkFine time earlier that she hadn't heard it??? and I was like, GURL. THIS IS IMPORTANT TALKFINE LISTENING. (Lmao arguing with Hannah about Pierce's beard bc she and Gabi hated it but I was like mmm I can get on board with this. Still kind of hatin' that I never saw Pierce when Hannah apparently had NO PROBLEM chillin' with him when she went to see Ani. the struggle.)
Then Wondeful Wednesday was oooovver and I was real sad about it like I had every right to be. :(
I'm not even going to make a separate Thursday section because literally nothing happened. We got up and went down to continental breakfast again, and Hannah could barely sit and eat anything before she had to leave to hop her train back to her suburb/farm lyfe. Then by the time Gabi and I were done eating our own food, I had to leave, too. Headed on out to Midway on the train, hauling my tons of shit for the last time; as I was getting off the train and into the airport, a couple of other girls in StarKid shirts and snapbacks were leaving the airport to get onto the train, and I was like, "Have fun at the shows, guys!" So cool. Then I sat and waited for my flight 5ever because I guessssss someone on the previous flight had thrown up a lot in the plane and they had to clean all that up before they could let us on. grosssss. MDW > ATL, ATL > ORF and then Kirsten came and picked me up and I went home, and I was dead to the world probably by 10:30 that night. Just...fuck it all.
I wish I could say I had time to rest, but I pretty much had to immediately get up and go the next day to make a film with my mom! But that's another story. As for this story, my dear friend Kelsey literally JUST tweeted about "that terrible feeling when you're hanging out with internet friends irl and you feel like there's a ticking time bomb in your chest and you just wish more than anything you could slow time down," and that was definitely my exact fucking feeling as my Chicago trip was coming to an end. I was clinging on desperately after Orlando, but I still felt like I had bought a little time before the crash, because losing Sera and Kelsey was sadder than sad but I still had Gabi and Hannah. But then to lose Hannah, and then Gabi too, the knowledge that it was Really Over... Well, a lot of that is why it's taken me so long to write these posts (not this one so much but definitely the LeakyCon one): Writing the account of something, the long tale that has a defined beginning and a defined end, is admitting that it HAD a defined end, and that it's over. And I didn't want it to be over. I never do. :(
In the immortal words of Darren Criss: Take it easy, Hogwarts.
Not sure if I'm gonna do the 48HFP in a post like these, since it consisted of way fewer entertaining anecdotes and mostly just "And then we filmed the next scene which was," but I'll definitely say a little something about it eventually in Adventures! v.3. Till then, I hope v.2 entertains, and I miss you all, goodbye.
Monday, Part 2
The scene opens on Sera, Hannah and myself unloading at the airport after our WEIRD Uber ride with that silly motherfucker of a driver. (Actually, a side-note, here's a weird thing that happened: I'm cradling my rocketship as tenderly as possible in transit, when I realize the two side fins that were on the verge of breaking off/falling off have been SECURELY GLUED BACK IN PLACE. I was planning to do this myself once I finally got home for good, but it had already been done?? NOT VERY EXPERTLY I MIGHT ADD because the fins have these little metal pins that are supposed to hold them on, and on one side, the fin had been shoved/glued back into place with the pin still sticking out on the side and not slotted back into the wood of the fin. Also whoever did it also painted some glue onto the crack in the green part, and it left a big slug-trail looking smear of dried glue right below it on the red part. Everyone in our room swears it wasn't them and I believe y'all. SO WHO??? Current theory is that housekeeping knocked it over at some point and thought the damage was their fault so they attempted to repair it for me. I'm still fucking baffled by all of this though. ????????)
ANYWAY I digress. Once in the airport we quickly realize that my gate is nowhere near anyone else's gate so I depart from people earlier than I'd hoped for :( I managed to get through the speedy/easy TSA line somehow though! so that was great! No removing laptop, no taking shoes off etc. etc. I hope I can keep finagling this in the future because it was mad convenient yo. Meanwhile Hannah's split from Sera I guess and Sera is at the gate literally RIGHT next to Kelsey's gate, since like...Kelsey's flight got mad delayed and she is still there, despite having left a couple hours earlier than us for the airport in the first place. So Sera and Kelsey sillytimes while I hang out and do nothing off in the depths of my much less exciting part of the concourse. I may have cried a little :(
Sat at my gaaaate for a while because our takeoff was mini-delayed due to LIGHTNING and all that stuff. Charged my dying phone. Watched this weird video of Pomme Koch and his girlfriend singing a Cher medley or some shit like "what am I doing." Vaguely paid attention to the news or whatever. Finally got on the plane blessssss. It was a longer flight than I wanted it to be and I was borrrrreedddd and p hungry I guess but I DID still have my Lunchable left over from Walgreen's in Orlando but it wasn't quite enough. This was probably the worst flight of my vacation in terms of like. Discomfort?? I think the person in front of me was reclining their seat WHILE I had my tray-table out to do the crossword and eat my food so that was annoying as crap. I also really wanted/needed to sleep and was trying to sleep on my alligator but was not really accomplishing that goal so that was shitty also. Worrrsst was I REALLY HAD TO PEE. BUT I was like well we'll be there soon and dnw bathroom on the plane unless I absolutely have to so I will just chill on it...also the woman next to me was like 12% rude and I didn't want to have to climb over her and yeah. Shrugsville.
We finally land in O'Hare slightly behind schedule because MORE WEATHER AND STUFF and we weren't able to land ~promptly, and then...because lightning.... WE SIT ON THE PLANE FOR LIKE AN HOUR AND A HALF WITHOUT GETTING OFF JUST SITTING THERE ON THE GROUND IN O'HARE. I understand WHY we had to do it for safety reasons and stuff but that does not make it any less shitty??? I was like I'M GOING TO DIE HERE oh my god actually the worst. And for a while they still wanted us to have our seatbelts on and not to stand up!! But FINALLY they let me get up and I went and used the airplane toilet I had to pee so bad I was beyond caring. It was hot and sweaty in the plane and everyone was irritable and SOME OF US...STILL HAVE TO TAKE THE EL INTO THE CITY.... oh my goddddd
At about midnight Chicago time I was finally allowed off the plane and I went to grab my suitcase and hauled my ass down to the blue line. UGH. Nearly passed out on the train but what can you do, and managed to text Gabi "Hey, which way do I go to get to the hotel when I get off the train?" JUST IN TIME FOR my phone to die before I could receive their answer. Fortunately I figured that out pretty easily bc I got my head back on straight. score. At about 1:45am, after landing on the ground in O'Hare at 10:15ish, I finally drag my ass into the hotel room and collapse on...... the floor. Not into the bed. Because I'm still starving, and also, still trying to coordinate last minute plans with the beautiful Molly Scanlon(!!). So I'm literally writing her an email at like 2am while stuffing the last of Gabi's chicken biscuits in my mouth and drinking ALL OF THE WATER bc I got so dehydrated on the cramped and sweaty plane. "I HAVE TO EAT COOKIES...AND EMAIL MOLLY SCANLON!!" actual words out of my mouth. Such a pathetic mess.
Sleep tho. With a real-ass comforter (thanks for nothing Orlando) in a bed only containing one other person. A significant fucking upgrade.
Tuesday
Woke up dying from my period, Gabi also dying from their period. Here we are, folks. It was like that Parks & Rec "I was dying earlier...then I died... Now I'm dead." I was like, Gabi, I'm gonna die and then I'm gonna have to be a ghost, do ghosts have periods?? And they said no, so I was like "THEN SHIT LET'S BE GHOSTS." So fuckin glamorous. (Did I mention we're in the weird hotel from Starship? BECAUSE WE ARE. In a significantly less weird room, but still: weird. The strangest Days Inn ever.)
Because of like, the 4 other things we were trying to do, the Molly situation was basically LUNCH ON TUESDAY, OR UH...IDK. Which was terrible because I was sending her emails about this at 2am Tuesday morning!!! FORTUNATELY, THESE PLANS MAGICALLY WORKED??? She sent me a list of options for stuff in the Evanston area closer to where she works, and one of them was "a vegan/vegetarian place with good desserts and interesting food called Blind Faith Cafe if you like weirder food things and good vegan desserts," so we were like OH, OF COURSE THIS. I was like "Well Gabi's a vegetarian and I love dessert so!!" Good times. Magic Molly plans. aaahhhhh.
We had to navigate some CTA shenanigans due to certain lines not running to where we wanted them to which was meh but then we made it there and got a table! Blind Faith is SUPER CUTE. We want to go there a lot more again like every time we do A Thing we want to make it a point to make a trip out there. Molly arrived and she is aaahhh beautiful we love her. So cute. Our chats with her were GREAT to include the following highlights:
- She knows everything about everyone?? Like she was up on her EKGS And Friends trivia. Cue us theorizing about her just like running flashcards every time before she meets up with us ffff.
- Sandwich banter. I was trying to decide between two of them but I was like "Well, this one sounds like one I could make myself, whereas the other one, I'd have to get at a restaurant, so..." and she was like "Well I don't know you have to do all these things!" and we were laughing about it and one of the things was "age the cheese" and she was like "You have to age the cheese!! You have to sit that cheese down and say, It's time you learn the facts of life." SHE'S JUST....A FUCKING DELIGHT.
- Near the beginning of lunch Sophie called her and they made spooky sister-brainwave plans for thai food? And she was like "That's so weird my sister never calls me like that." So then during the end of lunch, SARAH CALLS HER....ABOUT STUFF and she was SO apologetic like "I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS HAPPENED?" This was so entertaining omg
- We were telling her about what our plans were in the city and like...I/we were pretty much just there to do summer season stuff so we may have called ourselves "starkid trash" and Molly goes "What is that? Is that a thing?" pffff yes molly it is a thing and we are it. embarrassing lol.
Also, you know, the usual trash-talking of Ali and Marty and Corey because they're horrible monsters. And she really loved the corgi print I got her! SHE'S THE CUTEST. What I really loved was this soup I ordered omfg?? It was the soup of the day so now I'm WORRIED that we will go back and it will not be available again because that would be a downright tragedy because I am in love with this soup. I asked about it and as soon as he said "garbanzo" and "cheese" I was like I NEED IT..... damn. It was great because it made up for my sandwich being kind of like, misleading. It said "grilled vegetables" but then a lot of those ended up being...mushrooms??? BUT IT NEVER SAID MUSHROOMS and I was just. So disappointed sitting there picking all the mushrooms off of the thing. Gabi also got tasty potstickers that they shared with us! BASICALLY I want to go there again and everything is vegetarian so Gabi could eat everything and we were just so delighted.
Then Molly had to run back to work but first we took this cute picture because #stealingyourfriends. hehe. Then after she left Gabi and I perused the bakery side of the place and got some treats!! I got two lil baby eclairs and they got this whole tiny-but-also-huge single person(?) babby carrot cake. We kept saying like A WHOLE CAKE but it really was not THAT big but Gabi did still definitely eat the whole cake. hehehe. Molly had also recommended a fun place about a block or two down called The Mexican Shop so we bounced over there too and OMG. EVERYTHING IN THERE IS FABULOUS. they don't? have? a website??? I was SAD because I was like, I can't afford this now but I will definitely buy it from them on the internet, but NOT AN OPTION. Soooo many cute earrings and purses and tops and notebooks and thiiiiings. Gabi tried on a couple dresses! I think! And there was a thing I aaalmost got for my mom but I really could not justify it at all. Just BARELY out of the price range I could handle at this point. so sad. Gonna come back to this place too though absoluuuutely. fun fun fun aahh. Also, as we were getting back on the train, I took a pic of this really cool street art and Gabi judged the fuck out of me for being a tourist oops. IT'S JUST. REALLY COOL??? A LOT OF THINGS I LIKE. It's my phone bg now aahh~~
So then we're like still tired from the night before and from the whole convention basically so we struggle back to the hotel room, eat our treats, and then kind of doze in and out while watching like three episodes of Wife Swap. WHY THIS. I mean, it was on?? so? WHATEVER we gave up lmao. There was one ep where the one couple were like, IRL Superheroes and the other family was not HAVING it ahahaha hilarious? idk idk mannnn. But this was like the longest stretch of just straight chill time we'd had in ages, so I think we were totally capitalizing on it, and it was really nice. We just kind of zonked out on the bed and let our bodies catch back up a little. bless~ Also kind of making plans for the evening re: summer season! cool!!
We decided to head over around 5 I think for the backstage tour. Brian was running them on Tuesday and it was stuuuupid, l m a o. We had kind of decided if we were the ONLY people there we were just going to leave and do the tour Wednesday instead because just us + Brian = lmao no, but there were like 6 of us? Lol so. (Including a real cute friend all the way from New Zealand! She'd been at Leaky too and recognized us (aka my green lol) and we hung with her some.) So Brian lets us in and sits us down and starts talking about some stuff and encourages us to ask any questions we might have, and Gabi's being a shit so they're asking a lot of dumb questions and finally they just go "What's that?" and point at a random thing on the ceiling, and Brian was like "Okay, look, I'm happy to answer any questions but if you're just gonna be like that, I'm gonna have to put you on probation." BRIAN PUT GABI ON PROBATION lmao what a stinker!! This was so silly. He did take us up into the tech booth and show us the really cool shit they use to do the livestreams, though. The livestream cameras were synched to this joystick, so you could just steer the joystick in the direction you want the camera to go, and use it to zoom in and stuff, and the buttons let you switch between cameras! That was some real neat shit. (I stuck a #TinCaNinja sticker to part of the tech booth. No regrets.)
Then backstage proper, with all the funny TURN OFF YO MIC signs everywhere, and I slipped another sticker just casually into the pocket of Nick's Obi-Wan robe on the costume rack. Gabi I think put one on EKG's prop/costume crate, and another one next to Corey Dorris's name above the makeup mirrors (and I was like...gabi....that is not the right corey.... lmao). Mostly: Brian. He was just kind of the typical Brian half-troll, half-wet blanket and it was funnyyy and here we are. But we did actually get to see a lot of the cool things in their back of house and it WAS pretty neat. I guess. lol.
After that we kind of just got turned loose in the line, and had to sit and wait for a while. There was a little bit of line silliness! Some people behind us from the STL area? I think that was Tuesday night? They seemed super fun and nice~ And like, Actual Adults so that was refreshing. Mostly we just kind of camped out there and didn't do a whole lot; Tuesday wasn't as busy as Wednesday. And then it was time to go in and see Ani!! We got great seats! We were front row, in the center section but right on the stage-right aisle. So basically right in front of the band lol. Super cool to have TalkFine's album playing as pre-show music, and yeeeahh!! Ani happened!!!! I love StarKid shows live so much aahhh okay highlights:
- I actually...knew...a lot of the Star Wars stuff? that I didn't think I would? It was my luck that most of it was either super common knowledge, or else came from Episode I, which is one of the only ones I've seen, oops.
- The dancing!! DENISE IN GENERAL!!! Denise was probably my favorite part of this show and she did a real great job. Also as choreographer because Ani definitely had some of the best StarKid dancing I've seen in a while! She has a v different flavor from James Tolbert and it really shone through.
- Hand-in-hand w that: THE BAND. It was weird but cool...??? to have the characters themselves not be singing like in a true musical, just the band doing silly stuff. But I was into that! A lot of the songs were super fun and I can't wait for the soundtrack to come out.
- Julia Albain's character, as Joe Walker's character's love interest, was named Emily..... A Situation I was having
- Eric Kahn Gale crab-walking all over the place in super-tight leather pants was definitely A Highlight Of The Show. pleeeeassse lmao congrats on that jade elizabeth
- Everything Nick Lang did, a lot of which defies description. Drunk Obi-Wan, mostly. jesus.
But most importantly...a Blooper/Corpsing Situation....
Denise's B-plot character arc has to do with being a dancing slave girl in Jabba's palace? Ok sure. SO there is this one scene where she goes to audition, and the other girls at the audition are being played by Meredith in a neat costume and Chris Allen in a tiny Slave Leia-esque situation that obviously is too small for him. It's a tie-on bikini, but clearly does not tie all the way in the back bc it's tiny, but sure, whatever, that's part of the joke. BUT SOMEHOW...THIS WARDROBE MALFUNCTION...... I don't know where my head was for the beginning of this, distracted by Denise or the band or something, but the next thing I know Meredith and Chris are straight LOSING THEIR SHIT because so much is going wrong with this bikini thing. They're fumbling with it and trying to get stuff to happen and it's just NOT WORKING and they're both breaking character all over the place, so finally Chris decides fuck it, he's just going to yank the bikini straight off and be topless, fine, so he goes to do that, and in yanking it off it gets stuck on the wig he's wearing and he yanks the wig off too. EVERYONE'S DYING. He tries to put the wig back on but the bikini is still snarled in it and everything is going SO wrong and the audience is dying and Chris and Meredith are dying and the band is dying and somewhere in here Meredith takes both hands and slaps him right on both nipples, and then, after most of this ordeal is already over, Meredith's honest-to-god scripted line in the show as written that she's been saying every night already is something along the lines of "Girl, your titty is OUT, put them away." IT'S A LITTLE LATE FOR ALL OF THAT. ohhhhh my god, I hope they tell this story. I hope I can ask the right questions at future events to prompt them into telling this story to the public because it was So Much.
(Side note also: At one point a light saber or other weapon or something shot out of someone's hand and clattered across the stage kind of directly at where Gabi and I were sitting. I leaned to them and I was like "Shit, we were almost The People That Got Hit With The Light Saber a la The Girl That Got Hit With The Candy Cane!!" and we were gigglinnnnnn)
Overall, Ani had a bunch of super fun lil moments but unfortunately that was most of what the show was: just lil moments. It felt a lot like the guys had come up with some great one-off Star Wars jokes that they all really liked, so they were like, well, I bet we can string these together to make a show! But it just LOOKED really strung together, and not even making fun of itself could patch over those empty spots. It was a bunch of Star Wars jokes inserted into a weak-ish "underdog sports movie" storyline and I think, sadly, it's been their worst showing yet. Maybe people who REALLY like Star Wars, or REALLY like Chris Allen, were more into it than I was, idk. Glad I saw it but definitely won't be my favorite. (The soundtrack is gonna rule, though. TalkFine is super legittttt)
After the show I guess we saw Arianna? Just kind of hung out and did some things. I think this is when I bought the two Quicksand Jack single-issues and I was super stoked on that. Jenny is small and cool. Also I was trying to talk to the dudes from the band, mostly Pierce, and I didn't manage to ever find Pierce BUT I did snag Corey Richardson! What a baaaaabe. He signed my rocket for me, which I think he was a little overwhelmed by, and then thanked me super honestly for coming out to the show and having a good time and then SHOOK...MY HAND....... THIS WAS SO HILARIOUS AND UNCOMFORTABLE LMAO oh corey. u babe. And then with nothing better to do, and because it was free, we stayed for Meredith's latenite silly time!
This was kind of fun! Dunno if I'd've paid for it because half of it or so was just not my speed, but it was nice to support people doing a fun thing and so that made me feel good I guess. A neat guitar-playing friend of Mere's got up and did a couple of songs and one of them was...so funny.... it was about a man with boobs for eyes omg I hope I can find it on the internet to share with you PERHAPS THIS IS NOT MEANT TO BE.... ALAS but it was called Titty Eyeballs and she sounded like she should have been on, like, the Juno soundtrack so the contrast of her soft, sweet style and the subject matter was hysterical. Also a woman who did impressions! The funniest ones were she did like, nursery rhymes/kids' songs as celebrities? So she did Wheels On The Bus as Celine Dion and that was funny enough but then she did Hickory Dickory Dock as Randy Newman and I was PISSING. They were p much the highlights of this tho. Mostly I was just having my period so aggressively that I was having a hard time sustaining the Fun and I needed to go die, blehhh. But thank u Meredith for doing fun things!!
So AFTER after, we are all kind of dying, and idk I'm not in the world's GREATEST mood bc period, but Jadey-poo was there and it was fun to see her again because she's an absolute delight. AND THIS PERSON WE DO NOT LIKE WAS THERE.... I HAVE BEEN TRYING TO LEAVE OUT ACCOUNTS OF PEOPLE I DO NOT LIKE SO THAT I DO NOT SEEM LIKE A JERK BUT Jade also does not like her, hint hint I mentioned her in my account of drunk Saturday Night Jade, so it was funny for us to just all be in the same place after having had that exchange over the weekend and yeeeeesh. I think she was creeping trying to find Pierce? but he was long gone lmao. And finally there was like practically NO ONE there we stayed real late so it was time to head back. Walking back to the hotel we walked past this neat-looking shop called Twosided? and we were like, Yooo, we have to go back there when it's open because it looks mad cool. WELL. MORE ON THIS SITUATION LATER.....
Wednesday!
WE HAD A GREAT DAY WEDNESDAY. SO MANY FUN THING. We told ourselves we were gonna get up early for continental breakfast bc we hadn't managed that the day before, so we did! Except I thought it was going to be more like City Suites, where you just...go downstairs...the food is there...you can take some food and then leave again, so we didn't wear shoes, and this lady got mad at us for not wearing shoes and made us go back and get shoes fffff. But we ran back into New Zealand friend from the night before! Who was apparently also staying at the Weird Days Inn. We sat with her while we ate some waffles and tried to figure out our plans because Wednesday was the day we had slated for our SEUSSICAL ADVENTURE!!!
True story Gabi and I were REALLY trying to go see Seussical at Chicago Shakes. We knew Wednesday was going to be the only day we could do it because they had a morning showing, which wouldn't conflict with our Summer Season stuff, but somehow, while Gabi was in Italy, the ONE DAY we could go became the ONE DAY that the morning show was totally sold out. ?????? WE WERE REAL SALTY ABOUT IT TOO so we were like, Fuck it. We're gonna go out to Navy Pier, look pitiful at the box office, and see if we can get tickets. By the time we were done eating + dressed and showered we were cuttin it super-close on time, so we basically had to take the el as far in as we could, and then say "fuck it" to our plan of walking there and get a taxi real quick instead. THIS WAS AN ADVENTURE BECAUSE OUR TAXI DRIVER WAS A CRAZY DRIVER?? Like. He definitely drove over the speed limit/any speed that was safe and I'm pretty sure he did several illegal traffic maneuvers also. Ummmmm omg okay wow terrifying. Gabi and I were like !!!! BUT we got there with several minutes to spare, and it only cost like $8, so over all, mission success. Just. Dang. U crazy taxi friend.
Hauled ass up into CST and talked to some nice friends at the box office! They did not have any more available seats - several kids' camps were there, so that explained that - but they were able to put us on a waiting list, and we were fourth. Not ideal but hey we figured we weren't doing anything else so why not man!! We attempted to go sit in a sitting-down place but it was beyond the ticket-taker and he didn't want to let us at first, said we should probably stand and listen up if we were on a waiting list, but then the usher we talked to immediately was like "Well, why don't you just, go sit down..." and let us go over there lol. And then with SUPER AWESOME LUCK we got in!!!!!!! Seussical!!!!
We weren't able to sit next to each other which was the one super bummer part. They had us on awkward stools at the very back, one on either side of the center aisle door. That was pretty NEAT though because sometimes actors would enter through that door/come in from the audience, so like you'd look over and just fuckin...sour kangaroo is right next to you chillin omg. I was very EMOTIONS!!! I LOVE SEUSSICAL!!! Definitely cried. It was a neat production because there was basically NO ensemble like all the named parts just filled in when they weren't being their regular character. The Mayor was one of the Wickershams and his wife was one of the Bird Girls and yeah. BIRDS WERE SO CUTE THEIR CHARACTER SHOES WERE ORANGE LIKE LIL BIRD FEET. Also lots of POC in the cast yay and Gertrude was noticeably plus sized double yay!! I hate when characters who are supposed to be plain-looking/unattractive are just conventionally attractive actors dolled up to look unappealing. Give me nontraditional cuties pls. EVERYONE was adorable JOJO was adorable she was a tiny asian girl who was apparently a high school student?? Which wow because she looked like 10. The Wickershams were like skater punks with cool helmets (one had a skateboard, one had a razor scooter and one had rollerblades) and the SET and the LIGHTS and the BAND were REALLY GOOD ALL THE TECH STUFF WAS SUPER WELL EXECUTED LIKE A++++ SORRY YOU DIDN'T GET TO SEE THIS COREY LUBOWICH BUT WE DID BECAUSE WE MADE GR8 LIFE CHOICES.
The material itself was cut down some so it could be under 90 minutes (as a "children's production" or whatev) so it was baaaasically Seussical Jr., but Gabi and I both agreed that the only things we missed about the cuts were the act I How Lucky closer and then Hunch. Schmitz didn't really have a place in this version, esp with all the gendered language about making a boy a man considering Jojo was a girl, so yeeahhhh. OVERALL SO SO SUPER FUN I am so glad that we threw caution to the fucking wind and made it into this production. And yeah I definitely cried A LOT during Alone In The Universe and then a little bit more during Solla Sollew because let's be real, who do you think I am, a person who DOESN'T cry at these things? ChiShakes was super sweet about it tho awww
While we debriefed on the show and just basked in each other's company aaahhh the friendshipz we decided that I needed to be the kind of tourist who went on the Navy Pier ferris wheel! SPOILERS I LOVE FERRIS WHEELS. This was such a nice breezy lil relaxing thing to do before hiking back to where we could catch the train to recoup and then hit Summer Season part 2. The views and stuff were all so pretttyyyyy and I am really glad that we did the thing. Unfortunately, some plans we made while doing the thing.... Look, let me remind you that Corey SUPER INSINUATED that I might be permitted to crash a Tin Can Bros Alive rehearsal, and that he did this of his own volition and not because I said anything anglin' for an invite. Let's put that back out there. So I was like, Today is the only time I am going to be able to do this, and I had already tweeted at him a couple times with no response, and I was getting impatient, so we kind of said, Let's just go to Stage 773 and just like show up and see if they're there, or what. So once we got off the ferris wheel we began (this is what I called it in my notes) The Journey.
Spoilers: I spent pretty much the entire duration of this Journey having to pee prrreetty bad. But I was like, it'll be okay, I'll pee at 773. No worries at all. So Gabi decides they need to stop at their ATM, and then they really needed a Diet Coke as per usual so we stopped at Walgreen's across the street and they got a Diet Coke and I got an orange juice because it was hot and we were thirsty. Excellent cool success awesome. So like I'm still drinking this orange juice because it's hot and my mouth is thirsty EVEN THO I HAVE TO PEE P BAD and that's just making it WORSE, and by the time we're on our train I am like, the Great Big Struggle.
We get off at our beloved Belmont stop (xoxo City Suites) and head over to 773 and of course...we did not realize... IT IS NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC. HOW DUMB ARE WE. We can't get in and no one seems to be inside so just like, auugghhh, and I was like "Maybe they will at LEAST let me in to pee I NEED TO PEE" but no alas. Some kids from the production of Rent that was going on in there came and unloaded and ran inside and I almost tried to follow them but I didn't want to be too weird heh. Finally we just had to give up the fucking ghost and recognize that I was not going to get to a) crash this TCB rehearsal or b) pee. UGH.
We had kind of decided to go to Forever Yogurt (♥) though, so at LAST, the restroom, and then froyo! AAHH YUM. Forever Yogurt u are good people and we like u. That pistachio flavor was tasty as hell and she even got me that whipped cream out when I asked real nice hehe~ Gabi I think got Hella Fruit and then like 800000 too many toppings gabi needs to be saved from themselves tbh. But this was basically our lunch so. Yay fun!
We continued our walk back to our hotel, and suddenly we were like, WAIT: We'd been planning all day to get dumb stuff for Dan Strauss for his birthday, and we'd been in that Walgreen's and totally not gotten anything! We're The Worst. Fortunately, Chicago is the Land of 1000 Walgreen'ses (much like Lynchburg is with CVS), so there was totes another one on our way back. We got some great stuff~ I'd really wanted to get him a Happy Birthday Grandpa card, and the one I got him was just super perfectly like, sincere and cheesy and over the top, and Gabi was similarly invested in one congratulating him on the birth of his child (as Jaime Lyn had implied on twitter earlier that day). We also got some fun shiny trash party hats and a tiny balloon on a stick. Eeeexcellent. DELIGHTFULLY, this Walgreen's was also right next to a Petco, so we naturally had to go into the Petco and look at cats.
CAAAATTS!!
There were three kitties on display and they were all WONDERFUL. One of them was a tubby, mostly-white girl named Sparkle who looked sooooo much like Chansey that it was giving me the sads. Gabi really liked another fellow, a pitiful-looking brown baby named Langston (a name that had some sort of Oberlin significance so they were really into it and all over him), and I fell in love with THIS DELIGHTFUL JAUNTY LONG-LEGGED DUDE NAMED MONTY. OMG HE WAS THE BEST he was colored kind of like Justice's Bella? White on the bottom and tabby-brown on top but he had a little of C2's Loki about him in the face, and he was just. A GIANT. He was almost built more like a small dog than like a cat, his LEGS and just kajsdhfkajsfdh I seriously almost adopted a cat in Chicago, y'all. I wanted him so bad. He was just the handsomest lil man and I'm so sad that he didn't get to be mine. LOOK AT HIM.
We finally tore ourselves away from the cats (and from the temptation of buying a dog toy for Bowser or a cat toy for Valentine - too many options!!) and continued walking back to the Weird Days Inn. We're coming up Clark and we pass that shop again, Twosided, and we were like, Oh yeah! We were gonna go in there! So we sidetrack to go check it out. And there...sitting on the front stoop of this shop...the thing that would become iconic of our entire Summer Season Adventure...
FREE MUSHROOM.
I kind of -- stopped, and looked at it. I was like, "Wait a minute, free? Like is this piñata really free? But --OMG, IT'S DAN'S BIRTHDAY, A FREE PINATA? FOR DAN?" Literally a total stranger walking by was also entertained by FREE MUSHROOM and he witnessed my freakout and he was like "Well, you have to take it now." !!!???!?!?! I scooped the thing up and took it inside with me, lest someone else lay claim to my FREE MUSHROOM while we were otherwise occupied, and eventually I had to take it up to the women working there and be like, I'm sorry, but is this really totally free?
She goes "Oh, yeah! We've been cleaning out the back, we have a bunch of stuff that we're trying to just get rid of, here, take some more." We ended up also receiving a shitty plastic fake Oscar trophy, nowhere near actual size, and a couple of party-store type paper bats with unfolding wings. LIKE SIMILAR TO THESE BUT SHITTIER/STUPIDER-LOOKING THAN THOSE oh yeah. wow. this high quality free shit. The FREE MUSHROOM was still pretty great though so I was like, hell yes, thank you so much, and I told her how it was our "friend's" birthday and we were going to use it for him just as a surprise, because it was fate, now, so. Wednesday was A DAY.
The shop itself was actually suuuuper cool though, and each of us got things we actually paid for, too, because we thought these people deserved it hahaha. Gabi got a hilarious "Happy Gluten-Free Birthday" card for Lemley (whose birthday was also that wednesday I think! crazy) and I got a rad notebook, with the intention of making it my new scrapbook-notebook aaahhhh that's so overwhelming but yeah. As I was buying it she was like, Oh, yeah, that notebook's cool, Jason Mraz actually bought the same one. WHAT? Yeah apparently before he played Lollapalooza he stopped in and he bought the exact same one. Wow cool thanks Jason Mraz. what even was this day.
So THAT adventure completed, we finished The Journey and ended up back at the hotel at last. We planned for Arianna to bring some candy to put inside the piñata, and I made some shitty-but-commendable confetti out of a couple of the 8000 extra MinaLima fliers we'd gotten at LeakyCon, and then we were also trying to make plans with Hannah, to coordinate re: this Cheesie's groupon she had that we were going to use for dinner, and also trying to sneak her into the backstage tour even though she didn't have a season pass, and to sneak us into aNOTHER backstage tour despite having gone already. ULTIMATELY we wasted too much time fucking around, watching Friends and Family Feud, and not timing shit well and this didn't all work out super great. We weren't able to get to Cheesie's before we had to go on the tour.
BUT! WE DID GET TO GO ON THE TOUR AGAIN! And it was GREAT because instead of Brian, we got Walker, and Walker's fucking delightful. He was all over the fucking place with this lol and he started talking to us about random things that were on the stage, some of which Brian had shown us too, and then he mentioned the Stage-Left Door, and I piped up like troll-Hermione like "Say, Joe! Doesn't that door have something of a history within Team StarKid productions?" and Joe was like "Well, that is an excellent question! Why yes!" and we were little shits about it. He went on about the door in their shows blah blah blah walgreen drama center and how they REALLY missed it in Starship, and felt like it was kind of due to the bad luck/superstition of not having the door that stuff in Starship got so messy, and so he said for B@man they asked Corey like, Can you build us a door like The Door for stage left, and the way Walker told this story was so fucking funny oh my god like Gabi and I had to try so hard not to shit ourselves but he was like, Corey said "...Yeah. Yeah, I can build you a door, because that's my fucking job." FFFFFFF so good.
Joe didn't take us to the tech booth but he did take us backstage again, since I guess technically he had to because it WAS a Backstage Tour, and he pointed out this door off stage left that went straight to the outside and was like "This is where the band goes sometimes to smoke cigarettes...smoking is cool, kids! No, but really, it isn't. But the band is cool." And like that was basically just the tone of the whole damn thing lol. The dressing room was fun because Robert and Rachael were back there, and Rachael was cute and I asked her like, what her favorite name was that she had gotten in Oregon and she said Douche-Canoe, and Robert recognized me and made a point of making sure Joe had seen my costume from Leaky! So that was funny. Also there was a big bag of Cookie Crisp just chillin' on the counter and Joe totally offered it to all of us and I was like, oh hell yeah I'm gonna grab a big handful of that, and then I TOTALLY FORGOT TO. whomp hahaha.
Gabi stayed behind for a minute to talk with Rob but eventually we all ended up back in the theatre for some more just nice casual Walker Q&A, and I asked him if he'd thought about doing stuff with the team in any capacity besides acting. He directed the original Penis Play I'm p sure? so yeah, and he talked a little about how he's got an idea for a thing, called The Digger, and he said it was a stupid idea and one of the tech girls (she was up on a ladder doing a thing) was like "It's not stupid! It's a cool idea!" like just interjected haha and that was cute. And so he said that since he'd probably be writing it/creating it from his idea, it's likely that he'd work closely with the Langs on directing it as well, if anything ever came from it. So that's cool!! Walker I think gets overlooked as just like a goofy character actor, and he is really good at that, but there's a lot more to him than being a dweeb and having a smokin' body (which, let's face it, he does, blesssss). Also I mentioned his bunny and we were trying to solicit cute pictures of the bunny but Joey Richter kept interrupting things like a fuckass and then we realized what time it was and we were like, shit, we have to go get our fucking food!! so we bailed. But like I could've bro'd around with Walker for sooo much longer because he's just so rad, aahhhh.
We fucked up so bad timewise with this Cheesie's thing you guys. It came down to, I had to sit and hold our place in line (#LineCon2014) while Hannah and Gabi ran down to get the food, and they were going to bring it back, and we were basically just going to have to eat it in the theatre. OOPS. So I sat in this line for a while and chatted to some cute strangers and a big group in the gen admish line was playing Heads Up and was doing one with songs? and I was trying to help SO BAD this girl could NOT get Take On Me and the people playing were all doing the vocal line of it, but that obviously wasn't working because it's hard to do that without the words, so I started doing the synth beat/the line they sampled for Feel This Moment and they were like "yeah, yeah!" but she still didn't get it. rofl. and I guess I talked to Arianna for a second here too, I know we saw her before the tour and she was all crotchety because we weren't supposed to be doing the tour twice but we did anyway oops and she was like I CAN'T BELIEVE THEY ARE NOT CHECKING PEOPLE OFF THE LIST I CAN'T BELIEVE THEM and that was really funny, and also I gave her the FREE MUSHROOM contraband to secure until the time was right. hehehe. But yeah no I def saw her here because she came through and checked everyone off her list for season pass stuff and yeah.
Hannah and Gabi finally get back with all the food and Hannah gets in the gen admish line but is conveniently like, right parallel with where we are, so we all kind of huddle together from the two separate lines and start stuffing our faces but almost immediately as we begin to eat, the line begins to move and they start to seat us in the theatre. SHIT. WE FUCKED UP LOL. It was cool though because after some scrambling and recombining, we ended up with the EXACT same seats we'd had for Ani the night before, and we just spent the last few minutes between seating and the show starting just...totally scarfing our food as fast as possible and jamming to TalkFine. IT WORKED OUT GREAT BC I WAS LITERALLY SHOVING THE LAST BITE IN MY MOUTH AS THE LIGHTS WERE COMING DOWN. wow. sandwich pros here. damn.
Then: Oregon!!!!!!! I REALLY LIKED IT IT WENT SUPER WELL I LIKED IT A LOT MORE THAN ANI SRY NOT SRY. I feel like everyone's watched the livestream so there's not a whole lot I even need to say but dang it was mad fun. Songs for both the girls!! Lauren sticking stuff in her mouth!! JEFF AND JOEY HAVING RLY GREAT STAGE PRESENCE TOGETHER I am so glad this finally happened in a show because it has not ever happened before and I didn't even know how much I needed it until now. Also the lobsters?????? And like. Who even is Jeff Blim. The only disappointment of this show was that I didn't manage to get them to use Gordon Granger as the surname (they went with "Sneaky Slut" which is so not as funny t b q hhhh). Also let the record show that JeffDad being named Dick-In-The-Face was 10000% Corey Lubowich's doing and you can hold me to that. So many of the other StarKids/buddies were in the audience and they were being SHITS about it the WHOLE TIME and it was soooo great, omg these assholes. When all was said and done: I loved the show, I loved the implimentation of both the music and the fourth-wall breaks, there were some REALLY SOLID Oregon Trail jokes that they never felt the need to deliberately highlight, and just. Jeff and Joey. And COREY. WHEN U WAKE UP W BLOOD ON UR DICK.........................................AND U DON'T EVEN KNOW WHERE IT CAME FRUHUMMMMM...... pls. Thanks for this, Jeff Blim, it's exactly what I wanted.
Then we had a great lil interim period between Oregon and MProv where I finally got to see folks! I INTERACTED WITH RACHAEL AND COREY. GOD BLESS. Two of those last few elusive rocketship signatures down! When I talked to Rachael I mentioned that I'd been trying to find her for a while, but that I missed her at Twisted and especially at StarKid Takes Manhattan, and when I said SKTM she was like "Oh! Well thank you so much for coming to that! That was just...so crazy..." YEAH YOU'RE TELLIN ME. And I told Corey I was like "I didn't think I'd ever find you again to have you sign this, I'm so glad!" and he was like "lol well yeah because I haven't been in anything oops!" He was suuuuuper nice, I hope he comes back for stuff again because that would just be great, he's so talented. (And I don't want to be presumptuous but it almost felt like Jeff included him deliberately? Like, I think Jeff is honestly committed to making sure their casts are at least a LITTLE diversified, moreso than the other writers anyway. Mad props dude.)
Daniel arrived just as I was about to pick up our Free For Season Pass Holders posters and I was one of the first people to see him, so I was like, EYYYYY!!! and then everyone kind of turned and noticed and the whole lobby was like EYYYYY and everyone was so stoked to see him, tha birthday boi. I got right out of the line I was supposed to be waiting in to go talk to him oops (Gabi got us the posters eventually anyway so it was all good lol). He was GREAT!! I LOVE DAN. He was so overwhelmed by all the stuff we had for him, the cards and the hats and Arianna's box of donuts, and then I got to tell him the FREE MUSHROOM story and that was really fun and he was just. So stoked!! He deserves it because he is a great guy. Our cards seemed to really entertain him. Also I had signed Kelsey and Sera's names to mine just because Yes and he went "Oh yeah cool Three-Pillow, mm, yeah, Oh! and Charles, yes, cool, great." THIS GUYYYY. He took a gold party hat which was the same color I was wearing which was big fun and then he disappeared into the theatre to start getting stuff ready and took the piñata and everything was just so rad. I was so stoked on it.
Then I also kind of saw Meredith, outside, on her way in? And here's the thing was, I had brought this jar of house dressing from the Cheese Shop for Nick Gage, but the way the latenites panned out I realized I wasn't actually going to be seeing him, so I knew I had to give it to Meredith. I wanted to catch her when she wasn't in the middle of a bunch of stuff, so I ducked outside to where like two other girls were talking to her, before she even got in the building, and told her the whole story about it and I was like "so yeah this is for Nick! and he knows what it is!" and she was really cool about it and seemed excited and promised me she would get it to him. She was like, I'm going to leave this in the dressing room I guess because he's gonna be down here soon! so yeah! And that was a relieeeefff because I'd hauled that all the way from Virginia to Orlando to Chicago and it was Very Important. sandwich bros~
Speaking of bros: Nick Strauss was also there for MProv so we got to talk to him some! He told us Nico and Anna Robinson (Mary from The Moms) are engaged!! and gonna get married!! in New York, and how that meant we probably won't see Nico like ever again lol, and I was like....fuck. my rocket remains incomplete lol. And I took pics with Jeff and Joey, both of whom are like FULL ON #cutyourfuckinghair status at this time, alas. Jeff is so delightful lmao what a little shit. And Joey is just so wacky. WE FUCKED UP THO I FUCKED UP bc I was so stoked to get a pic with Joey, since my others with him are superdumb, and so then I get the pic and then Gabi goes "did you do it? did you get him?" and I was like SHIT, I AM SUPPOSED TO HAVE #TINCANINJA'D HIM AND I RUINED IT so Gabi had to do it, and I gotta say they did it less than stealthily. Not two seconds later someone from across the room goes "Hey you have a sticker on your back" and it kind of hit Joey what had happened, and he just sighed and went "oh, yeah, I know, okay, cool." BUT THEN HERE'S THE DUMB THING HE DID: He took it off his back and stuck it on his chest like right in his nipple area? AND JUST LEFT IT THERE FOR THE REST OF THE NIGHT. ALL THROUGH THE IMPROV STUFF AND EVERYTHING. these fucking idiots.
MProv was big fun!! Who even is Eric Schinzer. Overall I was way more into this than I was the Meredith stuff the previous night, it was way more my sense of humor - a bunch of stuff about lazer tag; a dude who like everything he imagines with his wacky imagination becomes real (though that quickly devolved into boob jokes); Daniel Strauss shouting "Hey, it's 2014, what's gender?"; several references to Legends of the Hidden Temple; and then one of the last bits of this night was kind of like... Meredith and BRosenthal(? I think) were a couple who were being like way too PDA, and Dan was like, oh no, you can't do that here, because of the bats - every time they uh, see PDA, they just uh - break out into elaborate three part harmony song and dance numbers -- And he set up the dudes being the bats (it was Schinzer and two of the dudes I didn't know) to have to do this thing like backed them into a corner on it but THEY COULDN'T DO ANYTHING BECAUSE THEY SUCK and it turned into just like, the three of them kind of sing-songing "We Are Bats We Are Bats We Are Bats We Are Bats" over and over and OVER again and we were LOSING IT BECAUSE:
WE TOTALLY HAD THESE THREE PARTY-STORE CHEESY HALLOWEEN DECORATION PAPER BATS STILL from Twosided earlier and HOW. Not only FREE MUSHROOM but this thing with the bats and Jess and Arianna and Hannah and Gabi and I were ALL DYING. IT WAS TOO GOOD.
The last improv swap-out of the night they left Dan onstage alone for a second and then instead of coming in to start a new scene, they came in all singing him happy birthday. aahhh it was really cute and nice, big friendship hugs and stuff. He thanked everyone for all the stuff and then brought out FREE MUSHROOM and smashed it right there on stage, with a broom handle! And then he and Meredith and everyone started throwing all the candy into the audience!! All in all it was a PERFECT ending to The Journey of earlier and it felt so cool to have been part of the whole thing. Aahhh daniel is such a good dude and he deserves nice things. what a bro.
After the show we got to talk more with everyone, with Nick and Dan especially, and Arianna took a cute pic with Dan where he's like, measuring how tall she's grown over the years, there was some joke where he's her uncle, it was great lmao. We also ended up talking to Meredith a bunch like riiiight at the end when the whole place was clearing out for the night, and idk she just seemed to be in a super-great mood? Like I feel like a lot of the time I have a hard time getting really Into Meredith because I'm so baffled as to how she makes her way in the world when I just like...don't ever see her being... I don't want to say "Serious" because let's be real when am I ever Serious with a capital S but just like, being... composed? Like behaving ENOUGH like a Rational Adult to stop and do some Rational Adult things but like every time I see her she is like a silly giggly child and idk I guess I just can't PERSONALLY conceive of living one's entire life with that kind of demeanor. But this was the first time I've seen her not be like, totally like that, but having a more realistically grown-up conversation, and still super giddy and excited about all her friends, but not being like 4 years old. SO YEAH IDK THAT WAS COOL and like Meredith IS real nice y'all. (Also those three bats we had, we gave to Dan, Meredith and Schinzer. They were like WTF HOW and we were like WTF HOW I KNOW RIGHT. so much happened.)
There were some friends who found out they were staying in our same hotel and wanted to walk back with us? Just for Safety Times so we all headed back to Weird Days Inn and we were telling them silly stories and they were telling us silly stories and that was real cool, and we all stopped at this 7-Eleven and got midnight slurpees aaahhh. LEMONADE SLURPEE IS ALWAYS BEST SLURPEE what a gr8 success. And then before long it was Hotel Time and we were all p exhausted because of doing ALL THE THINGS but I was like no, I need to stay awake forever because in the morning it is OVER so we stayed up maybe a bit too late lol and I played So Bad for Hannah because she told me during TalkFine time earlier that she hadn't heard it??? and I was like, GURL. THIS IS IMPORTANT TALKFINE LISTENING. (Lmao arguing with Hannah about Pierce's beard bc she and Gabi hated it but I was like mmm I can get on board with this. Still kind of hatin' that I never saw Pierce when Hannah apparently had NO PROBLEM chillin' with him when she went to see Ani. the struggle.)
Then Wondeful Wednesday was oooovver and I was real sad about it like I had every right to be. :(
I'm not even going to make a separate Thursday section because literally nothing happened. We got up and went down to continental breakfast again, and Hannah could barely sit and eat anything before she had to leave to hop her train back to her suburb/farm lyfe. Then by the time Gabi and I were done eating our own food, I had to leave, too. Headed on out to Midway on the train, hauling my tons of shit for the last time; as I was getting off the train and into the airport, a couple of other girls in StarKid shirts and snapbacks were leaving the airport to get onto the train, and I was like, "Have fun at the shows, guys!" So cool. Then I sat and waited for my flight 5ever because I guessssss someone on the previous flight had thrown up a lot in the plane and they had to clean all that up before they could let us on. grosssss. MDW > ATL, ATL > ORF and then Kirsten came and picked me up and I went home, and I was dead to the world probably by 10:30 that night. Just...fuck it all.
I wish I could say I had time to rest, but I pretty much had to immediately get up and go the next day to make a film with my mom! But that's another story. As for this story, my dear friend Kelsey literally JUST tweeted about "that terrible feeling when you're hanging out with internet friends irl and you feel like there's a ticking time bomb in your chest and you just wish more than anything you could slow time down," and that was definitely my exact fucking feeling as my Chicago trip was coming to an end. I was clinging on desperately after Orlando, but I still felt like I had bought a little time before the crash, because losing Sera and Kelsey was sadder than sad but I still had Gabi and Hannah. But then to lose Hannah, and then Gabi too, the knowledge that it was Really Over... Well, a lot of that is why it's taken me so long to write these posts (not this one so much but definitely the LeakyCon one): Writing the account of something, the long tale that has a defined beginning and a defined end, is admitting that it HAD a defined end, and that it's over. And I didn't want it to be over. I never do. :(
In the immortal words of Darren Criss: Take it easy, Hogwarts.
Not sure if I'm gonna do the 48HFP in a post like these, since it consisted of way fewer entertaining anecdotes and mostly just "And then we filmed the next scene which was," but I'll definitely say a little something about it eventually in Adventures! v.3. Till then, I hope v.2 entertains, and I miss you all, goodbye.